the savings of his life time and his own stake in life would make him, as a partner, jointly responsible, pecuniarily for those acts in which he made himself a conspirator.

Picketing Becomes Public Nuisance

Picketing had an established meaning in the City of San Francisco; pickets in time of disturbances became public nuisances upon the sidewalk; they flocked in such numbers that sometimes, by their very physical presence, they made ingress and egress into places of business substantially impossible unless a man or woman were willing to run the gamut of insult and insinuation. In one case, that was a personal experience some years ago, a captain of pickets testified that upon the leading street of the city, comparable to Broadway itself, that before a stable which was then the subject of a strike, he had used 120 pickets at a time, making entrance or exit practically impossible from such a place of business. In addition to the water front situation, the cooks and waiters organized into a highly esoteric association known as the culinary arts, and presented demands for hours and wages and the unionization of the restaurants of the city, and they had undertaken accession to their demands by the customary method of picketing.

Picket the Pickets

Why, time was when in San Francisco the pickets were so numerous and boycotts so common that the pickets themselves organized a union. The cooks' and waiters' union had struck the restaurants on Kearney Street, and procured sandwich men to parade up and down the street, as pickets, bearing upon their breasts and backs, the appeal which the union was making to the public in furtherance of their demands upon the employers. These sandwich men organized a union of their own and made demands for higher wages. Strange to say, the hard hearted employer, the trade union itself, rejected the demands, so the sandwich men's union put out pickets to picket the "scab❞ pickets of the cooks' and waiters' union, and the sandwich men's union pickets marched up and down beside the cooks' and

waiters' union "scab" pickets, and when the latter declared a restaurant unfair, the former stated he unfairly so declared it unfair.

Chamber of Commerce Restores Order

The Law and Order Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, in the course of a few weeks, with systematic determination, not only made its public appeal through the Press of that city in which it gained not space as news but in which it bought and paid for, a platform in which to describe its cause to the public, not only called public attention to the nature of the picketing that was being indulged in, but through the processes which our Government provided in the courts, secured on behalf of the struck restaurants, 87 injunctions in the course of a few short weeks, until it had cleared the streets of that city of a public nuisance in the person of the picket. Now, the laws of the State on the subject of picketing and the decisions of the courts have expressed a sort of a curious confusion between the theory and the practice of picketing, and nothing so certainly. overtakes an abstract theory as a concrete fact. Some courts have clearly seen that under the circumstances in which picketing is ordinarily indulged in, the passions aroused, the frictions created, the place and circumstances in which the picket puts himself, are such that it is practically certain there will be a disturbance of the peace and a violation of individual rights, or the courts have held that it might be possible for pickets to remain merely for observation and to peacefully undertake to argue and persuade the individual who economically differed with him about the merits of the controversy to accept his views and join in the common cause; but it usually happens that the gentlemen who engage in controversies of this character do not conduct their discussions with all that calmness that characterizes a theologian pulpiteer upon an iceburg in discussing points of doctrine with the members of a young ladies' seminary.

Attitude of Courts With Respect to Picketing

Some judges have gone so far as to say that there could no more be peaceful picketing than lawful lynching or chaste vulgarity, but the courts of California had been dubious upon

the matter, until, under the leadership of the Law and Order Committee, court after court had presented to it the carefully ascertained facts that presented the picketing merely as an infringement upon the right of the individual to have his business intercourse not only with the customer who sought his door but with the employee who desired, unmolested, to enter into his service, and 87 injunctions secured were the evidence of strong facts brought into the courts, and the bench itself became an educational medium that taught the community the meaning of picketing. But the committee was not satisfied with that; it went further, and it went further because it recognized the fact that the business man not less than the organized employee, was responsible for a condition in which disorder had become tolerated as a recognized part of industrial privilege in controversies of a particular character.

Labor Unions Should Not Be Privileged

We cannot be blind to the fact that we have permitted, in the field of union controversy, acts that we condemn in every other department of human action. We cannot be blind to the fact that we have tolerated interference with individual rights and individual opinion and individual action that we would not think of tolerating in any other controversy where men hold strong opinions of even greater importance. The Hebrew who picketed the Christian Church, the Christian Church that picketed the Synagogue, one sect that picketed another and blocked the way to egress and ingress to places of worship in order to change men's views on matters of conscience, would be condemned and abated as public nuisances, and even if their conduct did not result in religious outbreaks that bred disorder and violence, they would be stopped by any peace officer to whose attention the matter was brought, and yet the man who undertakes to change the religious views of another could have an argument that no one engaged in picketing in industrial disputes could possibly use, because one is actuated by economic interests and the other the desire to save a soul, and surely, if a man could be justified in undertaking to interfere with the liberty of movement of another for the purpose

of convincing him of the value of an economic position he had taken, what should be said of him who undertook to interfere with the movement of another into a place of worship in which the picket firmly believed he risked the eternal salvation of his soul?

Appeal to Citizens to Promote Industrial Peace

The business man of San Francisco realized that the business man had not been doing his part in the civil life of the city, that he had been politically indifferent to the growth of class government in his community; that he had tolerated conditions that he might have used his dormant influence to change; that he had found it easier to keep quiet and pay for the condition under which he lived than breast it with courage and, by doing so, end it, and we found them like other cities engaged in controversies of like character in which we were fighting, not over novel theories but fundamental principles and permitting ourselves to discuss and tolerate conditions we know are in fundamental conflict with the elementary principles of the government under which we live. They went directly to the citizen; they had an election before them; they supported no party and no candidate, but they had an opportunity to test the aroused civic spirit of their citizens, they had a chance to appeal to it in the light of the industrial stake of their own community; they had a chance to appeal to them because the perpetuity of a municipal institution was itself at stake. They undertook to arouse every element of that community to the issue and to make it not necessary to go into a court for sporadic and occasional and exceptional protection, but once and for all to express upon the ordinances of their city what they believed to be the public judgment of their fellow citizens. Under the initiative, which is in force in California and was then in force, they presented a petition for an anti-picketing ordinance, taking almost verbatim one that had been passed in the City of Los Angeles and tested in the Supreme Court of California, and they submitted it at the election of November 7, and they organized a committee on civic duty that undertook to stir the citizens of that city to a realization of the issue and the stake.

Widespread Campaign Against Picketing

They took their full page advertisements in the papers, they circulated their pamphlets and presented their arguments, but they did more, they went to every single individual voter, they sent him a post card upon one side of which they appealed to him from the fact that political indifference was a crime, to register and vote upon every issue presented in the coming election, and they said that "If you believe that class government is injurious to the city, give us your name and address and promise that you will register, if you have not registered, and will secure the registration of the members of your family who participate in this coming election," and the return postals began to come in every day in ever increasing numbers until on the day I left, 8,900 of them came in in a single day; but they did more than that, they carried organization to practical perfection. On the day of the election I read from a letter from the President of the Chamber, under date of November 7, expressing his confidence in the outcome of the struggle, and in the course of the letter he says "the greatest interest in the campaign centers in the local election and extends to every one having a stake in the City of San Francisco, including the occupants of the hotels and of every room and apartment; there have been some 400 girls at work for two solid days, and today they are calling up 22,000 and odd voters in the residence districts and reminding them of the election. They have a regular formula; "This is the Chamber of Commerce. Please be sure to vote on election day and vote Yes on the Ordinance to stop picketing." "

Anti-Picketing Ordinance Carried

And when election day came, a city that had been dominated in the past by organized labor, in one of the most sharply contested elections that that state or this nation has ever witnessed, carried the anti-picketing Ordinance by 5,000 majority. Now that Committee is engaged upon what they realize is a great educational task. It is not satisfied to make men obey the laws; it is not satisfied to make them understand